Pages

Friday, August 1, 2014

Cover Reveal: The Automation by G.B. Gabbler

The Automation

by G.B. Gabbler

Genre: Urban Fantasy

The capital-A Automatons of Greco-Roman myth aren’t
clockwork. Their design is much more divine. They’re more intricate than robots
or androids or anything else mortal humans could invent. Their windup keys are
their human Masters. They aren’t mindless; they have infinite storage space.
And, because they have more than one form, they’re more versatile and portable
than, say, your cell phone—and much more useful too. The only thing these
god-forged beings share in common with those lowercase-A automatons is their
pre-programmed existence. They have a function—a function their creator put
into place—a function that was questionable from the start…

Odys (no, not short for Odysseus, thank you) finds his
hermetic lifestyle falling apart after a stranger commits suicide to free his
soul-attached Automaton slave. The humanoid Automaton uses Odys’s soul to
“reactivate” herself. Odys must learn to accept that the female Automaton is an
extension of his body—that they are the same person—and that her creator-god is
forging a new purpose for all with Automatons…

The novel calls itself a “Prose Epic,” but is otherwise a
purposeful implosion of literary clichés and gimmicks: A Narrator and an Editor
(named Gabbler) frame the novel. Gabbler’s pompous commentary (as footnotes) on
the nameless Narrator’s story grounds the novel in reality. Gabbler is a
stereotypical academic who likes the story only for its so-called “literary”
qualities, but otherwise contradicts the Narrator’s claim that the story is
true.

THE AUTOMATION is a this-world fantasy that reboots mythical
characters and alchemical concepts. Its ideal place would be on the same
bookshelf as Wrecker's THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI and Gaiman’s AMERICAN
GODS—though it wouldn’t mind bookending Homer, Virgil, and Milton, to be
specific.

For updates and purchasing information on THE
AUTOMATION please visit Gabbler'swebsite. Learn
more about G.B. Gabbler and B.L.A. onTumblrand stay updated with them onFacebookandTwitter.